User BEWARE!

  • I think you can take the lack of screenshots as a hint of what is to come.

    I will walk you through the process:
    plugin installed – settings are clear and simple with number of seats available, opening times, days of the week and info on the restaurant incl. name, address, country, phone, email, URL.

    Automatically a page called “Reservation” is generated. When you go to that page however, the entire from is placed outside of the page (yes, I tried that too with the default theme – see screenshot).

    The plugin does not look at all at the timezone of the general WordPress settings and instead chooses a time in I think UTC-1, maybe UTC-2. Looking through the code it seems that the earliest reservation time is set to 3 hours after the current time; a good thing if it was comparing the actual time with the general settings. In my timezone it’s possible to reserve a table 6 hours ago…

    For the rest the form works nicely, after selecting the time and for how many people you get to step 2 which let’s you confirm the time and gives you 4 other possibilities.

    During step 3 you need to fill in your details such as name, phone, email and any comments you might have.

    after clicking “make reservation” this message shows:
    You reservation has been accepted. You will receive confirmation by email.
    Note to plugin developers: run a spellcheck.

    Now we’re getting to the worst and most shocking part of it all.

    I received my confirmation email (copied straight from the email):

    Dear name,

    Your reservation has been confirmed. If you cannot be present, you can cancel the reservation any time by using the following link:
    https://www.reservationdiary.eu/eng/cancel/7fc7a39c-2ac9-442e-8541-c82acada7845
    Reservation details:

    Reservation #: 594
    Place: Restaurant, restaurant address, city
    010-12345678
    Date: 19/01/2013
    Time: 16:30 – 19:30
    Content:
    2 People
    Comments: comment

    Your contact details:

    Name: name
    Phone: 1234567890
    E-mail: [email protected]

    Best regards,
    Reservation Diary Team
    https://www.reservationdiary.eu

    reservationdiary.eu ??? WTF

    And WTF is that link doing at the top???

    Going there it turns out that they have copied all details, of the restaurant and of the customers.

    You can just wait for all the spam that you are going to receive!

    THIS PLUGIN IS A TOTAL SCAM!!!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Author catkin

    (@thecatkin)

    Dear Piet,

    Thank you for your review. This helps us to improve plugin.

    Missing screen shoots.
    Take a look at our brand new screen shoots, hopefully this gives more information to our users what to expect.

    From is placed outside
    That is definitely something with your theme. We have checked our plugin in pure WordPress installation and with several random themes, works perfectly. Provided screenshot does not show what theme do you use, could you provide an URL?

    Plugin does not look at all at the time zone
    There wasn’t any request from users about that, as usually web sites are hosted in same time zone and it’s not a problem. But anyway, it was easy to fix and change is applied to new version of reservation plugin.

    It’s possible to reserve a table 6 hours ago
    Good guess, but no, system will not let you do that. We have strong validations on a server side to prevent such things and conflicts in reservations.

    Misspelling
    Thank you for pointing out, we have fixed it. Unfortunately spell checkers do not recognize sentence correctness.

    Most shocking part
    We are terribly sorry to shock you, but our plugin is based on API of reservationdiary.eu and not all API calls are ready. So the first URL intended to help users to cancel reservation just from web site. Well, we have removed it for now from email and we do plan to release canceling reservation from WordPress plugin in future.

    SCAM
    We do not share any of our user’s information with third parties.

    Thread Starter Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    hi, thanks for addressing some of the issues.

    screenshots now give at least some info, thx.

    I installed it onto a sandbox site with the twentytwelve default theme, cannot give you url as I already removed the plugin (I don’t like plugins that “phone home” for no apparent reason and without informing the user).

    usually web sites are hosted in same time zone
    don’t know where you got that idea, I would say usually not. Anyways, my server is in the US and I am in GMT+8 and your plugin seems to be set to GMT-1 for whatever reason.

    no, system will not let you do that
    Now why would I tell such a thing if it were not true. I tell you again: when I install your plugin on my site I can reserve a table on a time that in my timezone already is in the past.

    By counting on spell checkers to do your “translation” work you will indeed see lots of mistakes.

    Still the most shocking part of your plugin is that NOWHERE you inform the potential user that your plugin is:

    • based on the reservationdiary.eu API
    • phoning home
    • adding all details filled in from front- and backend to that website

    You SHOULD inform users about that and as long as you don’t my verdict remains.

    Plugin Author catkin

    (@thecatkin)

    Dear Piet,

    >twentytwelve default theme
    On your screenshot I don’t recognize twentytwelve default theme. Frame should be gray, and form has white background. I have made pure installation, and here how it looks for me:
    https://www.evernote.com/shard/s14/sh/6cbf792e-2b31-4bc6-9ff8-ab641e654942/051ac744386f670a1f902a123daa40a6

    Is possible that you have made installation after some experimenting with other plugins?

    >I can reserve a table on a time that in my timezone already is in the past.
    You didn’t created any reservations in past.
    You have made only 1 reservation, where you selected
    Reservation start time: 2013-01-19 16:30:00.000
    Reservation end time: 2013-01-19 19:30:00.000

    Time when reservation record was created: 2013-01-18 14:44:53

    So, in any time zone, it’s not in the past. Could you give me a screenshot from your inbox, where it’s visible that you have received confirmation email, and reservation dates are in past comparing to received time?

    > Still the most shocking part of your plugin is that NOWHERE you inform the potential user that your plugin is…
    > based on the reservationdiary.eu API
    > phoning home
    Information is added to plugin information page

    > adding all details filled in from front- and backend to that website
    We have added a checkbox to admin page that asks user permission to add a public record with restaurant details into reservationdiary.eu catalog

    Thread Starter Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    Hi,

    Thanks for offering the option not to publish the data on the reservationdiary website. I still think that it would be good when you write that too on the plugin’s description page instead of only in the changelog, but that is ofcourse just my opinion.

    I tried to install the plugin again to give you some screenshots you can believe, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work anymore (screenshot). I’m using the site as a sandbox with the latest development version of WordPress, currently 3.5.2-alpha and yes of course I have a bunch of other plugins installed too.

    If I have time later this week I will test it again on a vanilla install to show you the difference in time.

    Plugin Author catkin

    (@thecatkin)

    it doesn’t work anymore

    Looks like you forgot to activate plugin

    I was looking for timezone support in the plugin and could not find it anywhere. I even tried to modify the timepicker script and add the timezone manualy there does not work.

    Plugin does not look at all at the time zone
    There wasn’t any request from users about that, as usually web sites are hosted in same time zone and it’s not a problem. But anyway, it was easy to fix and change is applied to new version of reservation plugin.

    Can’t find that. I would really appreciate help on that issue.

    Plugin Author catkin

    (@thecatkin)

    Hi, could you describe what problem you are trying to solve with time zones?

    You can send it to [email protected]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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